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When You Want It That Much More

All the poor Bihari kids in the Super 30 got into IIT this year. What's the secret?

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When You Want It That Much More
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Rigour Rules

Select the Best
Candidates are screened for IQ levels with three written tests, categorised as 'difficult', 'more difficult' and 'most difficult'.

Make them Slog
For one year, students study day and night; they can't miss a single tutorial class.

Stay Focussed
As far as possible, no television, no Internet, no movies.

Practice Makes Perfect
Students are subjected to repeated mock tests; by exam time, they've gone through hundreds of question papers from previous years.

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"The desperation to rise above their station should not be underestimated. It makes these students strive harder than others," says Anand Kumar.

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"Overcome every obstacle": Satish Kumar, his mother behind him

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That was nearly fifteen years ago, when her youngest son Satish Kumar was only three. She recalls how they would tell the young boy who loved to study that he was wasting his time reading books because he was too poor to ever afford a proper education. His mother's 200-rupees-a-month widow's pension was hardly enough to buy rice for the family, let alone books or the school uniform. "'You need mental strength and physical stamina for the hard work that education entails'," Nirmala remembers her mother-in-law telling her. "'How will he get that from the rice starch and salt you give him to eat?'"

Eventually, this endless mocking chased her out, and Nirmala Devi moved into a separate two-room house in a slum a few blocks away. Today, clearly she has returned, head held high, to answer those critics. That's thanks to Satish, who is now 18 years old, and had resolved, in his own words, "to overcome every obstacle that came my way to rise to the top". When this year's IIT-JEE results were declared in April, his name appeared alongside India's highest scorers, giving him automatic entry into any of the Indian Institutes of Technology, considered the nation's premier temples of higher learning, entry into which is also still regarded as a prerogative of the privileged.

But then so did the names of the 29 other students of the coaching group he was part of: the Bihar-based Ramanujam School of Mathematics' 'Super 30' section, run by Anand Kumar, a mathematics teacher and columnist for various national and international science journals and magazines. This year is special for the original 'Super 30', set up in 2002. This year, each and every student of the coaching class—all, it must be stressed, from below the poverty line needy families—made it to the IITs. Its extraordinary success is not only a topic of much speculation in the academic world—which has not yet been able to crack the secret code or its formula for success—but is also a cause for concern for a number of commercial JEE-coaching institutes in Bihar, which obviously fear being done in by the competition.

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A couple of years ago, there were several attempts on the life of Anand Kumar—including bombs being hurled at him on the streets of Bihar as well as an incident in which he was nearly stabbed in the chest by a masked man. These incidents, according to Anand, "were attempts by competitive commercial coaching companies, in connivance with local criminals, to finish me off". Today, he never steps out of his house without three armed bodyguards. A ferocious Labrador stands guard outside the house. And he carries a loaded and licensed pistol to bed whenever he feels threatened. "I don't want to take chances with my life. Many people depend on me and I have unfinished business to take care of."

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Vishwaraj Anand, 17
"Aerospace is my interest. One day I want ISRO to do better than NASA."

He’s the son of a Grade-IV government employee, who got a job during the electrification drive in their village but subsequently was laid off. Vishwaraj was sent to Patna to live with his grandparents because there was no money to educate him. Ambitious, intelligent and hardworking, he excelled in school—and then applied to the Super 30.

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Nagendra, 18
"Nothing is impossible."

The son of a sweeper, Nagendra studied in the free government village school and was always ‘first’ in class. He hated the sight of seeing his father cleaning sewers and vowed he wouldn’t do that. Borrowed Rs 60 to buy the Super 30 application form.

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Rahul, 17
"I never imagined that, with my financial background, I could make it to IIT."

Ever since Rahul’s father—who worked in a local press that shut down a decade ago—lost his job, there’s been no steady income for the family. Enrolled in a free government school, Rahul had his eyes peeled for better opportunities. Then came Super 30.

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